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Featured Columnist

Indie Jones

Indie Jones is not an archaeologist and adventurer, although he would certainly love to be. He lives in Paris, a city that not only shelters rat chefs, but is reputed for offering the richest film programming on the planet. And so he goes, an avid reader and self-declared film addict, haunting theaters, searching for the next cinematic treasure, be it European, American, Asian, African, or maybe one day, who knows, extraterrestrial.
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Shrykespeare

Shrykespeare is a native Arizonan, one of the few who actually has the nerve to admit it. He is a movie, TV and sports junkie, who occasionally finds time to spend with his tolerant but exasperated wife. His talents include witty banter, golf, Scrabble, and reciting Monty Python and The Holy Grail from memory. His role models are Homer Simpson and Al Bundy, and he vows to make the world a better, lovelier, happier place as soon as those damn Powerball numbers come in.
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Howard Roark

The person hiding behind the Howard Roark moniker is an industry veteran who will refrain from listing his credits and accomplishments as it would negate the use of the Howard Roark moniker. Just accept that he thinks he knows more than you. In the words of Kazunori Nozawa: Trust me!

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Lee Farber

Lee Farber is currently a writer for "The Soup" on the E! channel. Before that, he wrote on "The Wayne Brady Show" and won an Emmy. It's shiny and pointy and looks great when worn around the neck. He is putting together his first feature, "The Yentas of Sunrise Lakes", about old ladies in Florida, because he knows what the public wants. Lee lives in Los Angeles with his wife and his collection of bootleg CDs.

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Ronald Banks

Ronald Banks lives in the heart of Hollywood where his hobbies are going to the movies, renting movies, and buying movies on DVD. If you see him in the theater, please remember - there is no talking during the film.

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Thomas Donnelly

Thomas Dean Donnelly is the screenwriter responsible for 2005's Sahara and A Sound of Thunder, as well as other films. There is nary a studio he hasn't worked for nor an agency he has not been represented at. In his spare time, he designs games, like the one you are playing right now.

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Whiting Tattoon

Whiting has been intimately involved with no less than twelve Academy and Golden Globe nominated and/or winning films. He has worked for talent, production companies and studios, in capacities ranging from PA to editing to marketing executive to screenwriter. He is an unabashed lover of cinema, a student of the art form and prone to seizure-like moments of clarity.

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Featured Analyst

Steve Mason

Steve Mason is a Los Angeles-based talk show host for 710 ESPN Radio. He has previously hosted the nationally-syndicated "The Late, Late Radio Show with Tom Snyder & Steve Mason" for CBS Radio and worked the last five Olympic Games for NBC and Westwood One Radio Network. He is also President of Flagship Theatres which owns the University Village Theatres near downtown Los Angeles and Cinemas Palme d'Or in Palm Desert, California.

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Nicodemus

Noted sage and mystic Nicodemus, a reputed cyber-scavenger and data carrier, recently escaped from the National Institute of Mental Health. He spends his hours scuttling amongst the pipes running directly beneath the Information Superhighway, collecting scraps of knowledge and overlooked treasures that fall, unnoticed, through cracks and gratings from the world above. He also writes in characters of magic fire and, on occasion, he really, really likes a nice hunk of moldy cheese.

Featured Columnist

Mister Informative

Mister Informative is a college student from Appleton, Wis. He is a staff leader/projectionist for Carmike Cinemas, a national theater chain headquartered in Columbus, Ga., and is a big fan of the new DLP digital cinema technology. He's also been an associate architect of award-winning, in-lobby promotional displays for Over the Hedge and Talladega Nights. Upon discovering Fantasy Moguls, he promptly joined a league with his co-workers -- and that's where the fun began!

Advice & Analysis: Weekly Tracking

Advice & Analysis: Reviews

April 17, 2008

by Steve Mason

Forbidden Kingdom (Lionsgate), featuring martial arts superstars Jet Li and Jackie Chan, will likely win the box office weekend of April 18-20. With generally positive reviews and a family-friendly PG-13 rating, Kingdom has 7 percent Un-Aided Awareness (buzz) and a Total Aware of 76 percent, according to my studio sources. It has the strongest Definite Interest among Under 25s of the four new releases (53 percent with Males Under 25 and 32 percent with Females Under 25). An excellent 25 percent of young males name this martial arts fantasy film as their first choice, and it could even get a decent family bounce on Saturday. I'm forecasting a $17 million-$20 million opening weekend and $37 million-$42 million domestic.

The tracking for Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Universal) indicates that we may all be suffering from Judd Apatow fatigue. The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad were revolutionary, but Walk Hard and Drillbit Taylor have followed with disastrous results. Still, critics are very positive and, by all accounts, Jason Segel is a charming lead. Overall Definite Interest of 30 percent is very low, but the film is the First Choice of Females Under 25 (15 percent) and the Second Choice with Females 25 Plus (14 percent). This looks like a $13 million-$16 million opening weekend, which would be a disappointment, but I suspect this movie will have legs. $40 million domestic is possible.

Al Pacino is slumming this weekend in 88 Minutes (Sony), and, although awful reviews are pouring in from coast-to-coast, the industry tracking is better than respectable. More people have heard of 88 Minutes (67 percent) than Forgetting Sarah Marshall (63 percent), and the Pacino thriller has a 15 percent First Choice. Not bad for a pre-Iron Man throwaway. The Oscar winner and the R rating make this a 25 Plus genre pic, and those moviegoers don't generally show up on opening weekend. Plus bad reviews and bad word-of-mouth will limit the upside, but I see 88 Minutes reaching $9 million-$12 million and $23 million-$26 million domestic.

Nathan Frankowski's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a documentary being released on more than 1,000 screens by Christian-friendly Rocky Mountain Pictures. Those who have seen it categorize it as anti-Darwinism propaganda, featuring right wing commentator Ben Stein. I’m sure that there's an audience out there somewhere for this type of doc, but there has been very little "intelligent design" involved in marketing the movie. With a Total Aware of only 19 percent and a First Choice score of just 2 percent, Expelled will manage only $1 million-$3 million this weekend, and it will have a difficult time holding on to those screens. It's doomed to $5 million domestic in its theatrical engagements (survival of the fittest?), although a fair number of DVD copies may be sold in evangelical bookstores in the future.